Despite this thread being inordinately old, I noticed that there was only one legitimate guess at what the greatest mountain feat by an American was. That guess was John Waterman's 145-day solo traverse of Mount Hunter. This is the answer to that question, however I present another possibility which is deserving of consideration.

Read Twight's book Kiss or Kill: Confessions of a Serial Climber for a discussion of this route. The Reality Bath was the first grade VII ice climb. It is considered by all rational climbing authorities to be a death route, and as such has never been repeated.

As far as I'm concerned, in order to qualify for a 'greatest feat' you have to do something which is considered to be impossible by all rational assessments. The trick with these 'greatest feats' is that they tend to get overtaken every generation.

Hate to bump the Frankenthread, but one of the most impressive feats, although not from the "golden age" of mountaineering, would definitely be Josh Wharton's lead of the final pitch of a new route on Trango Tower. Can't recall the details, but it involved him onsighting 5.10x slab at nearly 20,000 feet after five days of dehydration.

Hate to bump the Frankenthread, but one of the most impressive feats, although not from the "golden age" of mountaineering, would definitely be Josh Wharton's lead of the final pitch of a new route on Trango Tower. Can't recall the details, but it involved him onsighting 5.10x slab at nearly 20,000 feet after five days of dehydration.

Don't impose your fear of runout slabs on the mountaineering community! I'm sure it tickled his taint to see that slab at the end of his ordeal.

I guess that when someone asks me what the "greatest" was I look for events that changed the paradigm. The fastest will always get faster, the gnarliest will get more gnar and the most dangerous will always be the luck of the draw.

When I look at climbing as a whole, the stand-outs to me are Chouinard, Robinson and Frost's adoption of and promotion of clean climbing, Batso's ascent of El Cap, Jeff Lowe's climb of Bridalveil and Long, Bacher and Westbay's 1-day ascewnt of the Nose. The changed changed the world of climbing in unique and enduring ways. When Messner and Habler climbed an 8,000M peak without oxygen the shook the world. So did the first party to climb a mountain by the most difficult route or cleanest line rather than by a route which would deliver them the summit. Perhaps when Croft soloed Astroman, the world changed. Or maybe that was Bachar, who was the first to solo hard. I don't know...each person has to look at this history as an individual and ask herself, who has done something that made me look at climbing in a different way? Alex Honhold is an amazing and talented climber who is blowing the roof of of standards, but has he changed the climbing? No. He's just pushed the envelope.

John Waterman really did break new ground with his ascent of the SE Buttress of Hunter but did it change the way people climbed or looked at climbing? I don't think so. If it had we'd see others hauling 17 haul bags weighing 1000 lbs over months to climb badass buttress. It just ain't happening.

The sourdough expedition that was the first to climb Denali gets my vote. Four totally green guys traveled hundreds of miles through grizzly infested wilderness and swamp and climbed it on a bet.

"The climbers did not use ropes because as Taylor said later ‘We did not need them.’ This was typical of the Sourdoughs’ style. With the exception of the fourteen-foot flagpole, they choose to travel light."

Yeah....they lugged a 14 ft spruce pole to the top with them so they could put the American flag up and leave a testament to their climb.

"The summit party consisting of Taylor, Anderson and McGonagall set out at 3.00 a.m. - a true Alpine start. For some reason or other Lloyd had returned to Willows Camp: he may have been suffering from altitude sickness. Without the protection of a rope the three climbers surmounted the Karstens Ridge, traversed the Harper Glacier and scaled a steep couloir since known as the Sourdough Gully. Not far from the summit McGonagall stopped explaining later, ‘No, I didn’t go clear to the top. Why should I? I’d finished my turn carrying the pole before we got there. Taylor and Pete finished the job. I sat down and rested, then went back to camp.’ As with Lloyd he may have been suffering from altitude sickness. The other two, Taylor and Anderson, climbed on still lugging the flagpole. At 3.25 p.m. on April 3rd, 1910 they were standing on the North Peak. They had made the summit push from 11,000 feet (3352m). Encumbered with the flagpole they climbed more than 8,000 feet (about 2500m) and then returned to their camp site in eighteen hours. An extraordinary feat of mountaineering."

Nothing done in this day of goretex, ropes, and weather forecasts will ever impress me this much.